"Guacamole!" Credensa shot back over her shoulder. "That creep offered us guacamole! And where there's guacamole, there must be..."
"Avocados!" Sendula finished. Both kept running.
"Sure!" Sid shouted. "Little plant avocados! You know -- the fruit? The non-anthropomorphic, non-giant, non-killer ones? They're harmless!"
The amazons looked at each other. They stopped. They turned around.
"You're sure?" Credensa asked.
"No kidding?" Sendula echoed.
"I'm sure. I'm not kidding."
Both women breathed a deep sigh of relief.
"Incidentally," Sid said as he handed them back their spears. "Why are you so freaked out? You dealt with giant killer avocados all the time in your birth-world, bravely and unflinchingly. Why are you running like scared rabbits now?"
"Our old world was a B-movie that we escaped from the middle of," Sendula reminded him darkly.
"We got curious to see how it turned out," Credensa added.
"So we rented it," put in Sendula.
"And we get boinked and eaten," finished Credensa.
"No way we're gonna let that happen again," Sendula post-scripted.
Sid sighed. "I wondered why you were up so late last night," he said. "Gave you nightmares, did it?"
His wives nodded their heads vigorously.
"Well, it's over with, now. Let's get back to work. Now!"
Sheepishly, they fell in line behind him to return to the Backstage Hotel.
"So, is the world going crazy again, or what?" Credensa asked, trying to put the guacamole fiasco behind her.
"It's going what," Sid confirmed. "Actually, it's just F-Cup Fitzgerald playing around, but since he wrote us in, we have to deal with it."
"Why do we always have to clean up after the Authors' shit?" Sendula grumped.
"It's our jobs."
Just then a previously unknown character appeared with a loud POOF! It looked rather like a human-sized version of Mushu from "Mulan," in bat-kite drag like he'd used towards the end of that movie.
"Ha!" cried the character. "You're doomed now, Sid Russell!"
Sid sighed again. "If I had a nickel for each time I've heard that... who the hell are you, and why am I doomed."
"Who am I? Who am I? I am the powerful, the pleasurable, the barely even describable Fruitbat! And you're doomed because F-Cup Fitzgerald doesn't like you in this option, and gave me the contract to doom you!"
"He's not writing this episode," Sid pointed out. "Dabbler is."
The Barely Describable Fruitbat looked down at the sig line. "Oh," he said. "Well, even so. Fitgerald enabled the option, so Dabbler's bound by it. So there."
"Since when?"
"Since he throws hissy-fits when people sabatoge his options, that's since when!"
Dabbler appeared next to Sid. "Sorry, Sid, he's right. Nice authors don't trash other authors' options. And I'm a nice author."
"Shit," Sid said.
Fruitbat did a little dance. "Doom!" he chortled. "Doom, doom, doomdoomdoom! Ha, ha, I get do doom you! Any second now!"
"Does he really?" Sid asked Dabbler. "Just where did it say 'doom' in the enabling option?"
"It didn't. No dooming, Fruitbat, old bean, just banishing."
"What? Can't I do just a little doom?"
"Not even a smidgeon of a doom."
"Damn! Okay, Sid, prepare to be banished from the Backstage forever!"
"Can't do it forever," Sid said. "I'm all over the place Backstage in other threads."
"Oh man, how did I get this lousy gig, anyway?"
Dabbler grinned. "Fitzgerald and I conspired to stick you with it," he told the dopey-looking dragon. "Now be a good little boy and do your duty."
"Okay, okay. One temporary banishment, coming right up." He looked at Sid. "Poof," he said.
Sid vanished.
"Hey!" Credensa cried. "You can't do that to our husband!"
"Pipe down, girly, or I'll poof you too," the dragon growled.
"I won't! What right have you to--"
"Poof," said Fruitbat.
Credensa vanished.
The dragon was brushing his hands together at a job well done when he felt something hurt. He looked down to see Sendula's spear sticking out of him. "Ow," he said. "Hey, that's not nice. Poof, already!"
Sendula and her spear vanished.
"Jeeze, these characters! Okay, what now, Dabbler?"
The Author shrugged. "Well, since you've poofed the resident enforcers, you could be a nice little dragon and go quell the chaos for them, if you want. Or go add to it, whatever Fitzgerald has in mind. I don't care. I'm outta here." And with that, Dabbler vanished as well.
"Oh well," Fruitbat shrugged. "Guess I'll mosey on over to the Hotel and see what's what. Hey, what--? What's going on? Am I growing breasts, here?" teleports in and BANISHES Sid and his wives from the Backstage area, at least temporarily!
Thu Mar 29 18:35:22 2001
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